Chile Mining Accident (2010)

Martin Bernetti/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Updated: Oct. 12, 2011

On Oct. 13, 2010, 33 miners who had been trapped underground for more than two months all returned to the surface after a successful rescue operation that inspired Chile and riveted the world. The miners traveled up a narrow, nearly half-mile rescue shaft in a specially designed capsule. The final phase of the long rescue effort took roughly 22 hours. Luis Urzúa, the shift leader who organized the miners’ lives while they were underground, was the last to come up.

Many of the miners came bounding out of their rescue capsule as pictures of energy and health, able not only to walk, but, in one case, to leap around, hug everyone in sight and lead cheers. Their apparent robustness was testimony to the rescue diet threaded down to them through the tiny borehole that reached them on Aug. 22, but also to the way they organized themselves to keep their environment clean, find water and get exercise.

The miners hoped to sell their stories as well as file a lawsuit against the mining company. But one year after their globally televised rescue, after the worldwide spotlight faded and the trips and offers dwindled, the miners said that most of them were unemployed and that many were poorer than before.

On Aug. 5, 2010, a gold and copper mine near the northern city of Copiapó, Chile caved in, trapping 33 miners in a chamber about 2,300 feet below the surface. For 17 days, there was no word on their fate. As the days passed, Chileans grew increasingly skeptical that any of the miners had survived — let alone all of them. But when a small bore hole reached the miners’ refuge, they sent up a message telling rescuers they were still alive.

A video camera threaded deep underground captured the first images of the miners, all apparently in good health. The discovery sparked jubilant celebrations nationwide as rescue efforts energized the country, which owes its prosperity to the rich copper mines in its northern region.

The miners later used a modified telephone to sing Chile’s national anthem to the hundreds of teary-eyed relatives celebrating above. In Santiago, the capital, motorists honked their car horns and people cheered wildly on subway platforms.

News reports suggested that ventilation shafts had survived the mine’s collapse, allowing enough fresh air to reach the chamber where the miners were trapped. The miners were able to use heavy equipment to provide light and charge the batteries of their head lamps, and they drank water from storage tanks to survive. They stripped off their shirts to endure the stifling heat but did not appear to be threatened by toxic gases such as methane, which can poison miners after cave-ins.

Food was in short supply, and rescue crews used the tiny bore hole to thread down tubes containing sugars, water and liquid nutrients to help sustain the miners, while continuing the painstaking work of drilling another tunnel without causing another collapse. The thin shaft became an umbilical cord to keep the miners alive, from which they could receive information about the rescue efforts and communications from family members.

On Oct. 9, 2010, two excruciating months later, a more sizable drill finally broke through to the miners. It created space for a rescue shaft through which the miners were raised, one by one, in a capsule especially designed to contain a human being. As the vast team of rescue workers, medical personnel, technicians and mining experts entered the final phase a few days later, the colorful scene reflected the huge scale of the operation that captured the attention of the world: more than 1,400 journalists, together with anxious and elated family members of the miners, gathered to witness the rescue.

The mine, known as San José, has had a history of accidents and was forced to shut down briefly to make safety improvements, but its owners did not carry them out, according to some lawmakers and a risk prevention specialist who worked for the company.

On Oct. 12, the first rescue worker descended underground to the miners who greeted him with enthusiastic handshakes. Late that evening, Florencio Ávalos, 31, was the first miner to ascend to the surface.

Upon emerging from the capsule, miners were greeted by family and rescue workers before being led away for medical treatment.

Back to Normality

While the world has begun to move on, the miners are beginning to grapple with the enormousness of what happened to them. The men have resisted breaking a pact they made to keep the most gripping details of their two months in captivity to themselves in the hopes that together they can secure book or movie deals, as well as build their best case for a lawsuit against the mine. They have held especially close what happened in the first 17 days after the gold and copper mine collapsed, the time before they knew rescuers were still searching for them.

Four miners who agreed to speak without pay offered a view into the intense emotional struggles they faced underground, and now above. Omar Reygadas, a great-grandfather, had survived two previous collapses at the San José Mine and narrowly escaped a third that killed another miner. But in the first days after the latest cave-in in August, he said, he cried, from feelings of sheer helplessness.

Mr. Reygadas, who at 56 was one of the oldest to have been trapped and the 17th miner to be rescued, said after the explosion the men searched for others, finding that no one had died. But whatever relief they felt was short-lived. Within hours, the men were faced with a fateful choice. There was a way out, through a ventilation shaft. But after discovering that the ladder there was too short, they knew all they could do was wait. Two days later, a boulder rolled into the shaft, sealing it for good.

The miners have refused to go into great detail over what happened in the next two weeks, as men wilted in the heat and shrank, their tiny rations of tuna and crackers too meager to do much more than keep them alive.

The story picks up again on Day 17, when the rescuers’ drill bit pierced the roof of their refuge, starting the clock for their eventual freeing.

One thing the men were ready for was the lust for their story. They learned that lesson firsthand, from a group of Uruguayans who had survived a 1972 airplane accident in the Andes, depicted in the 1993 movie “Alive.” The group paid the miners a visit and chatted with them via the modified telephone, Mr. Reygadas said. He said they counseled the miners to “not give away too much,” as they felt they had.

Since the rescue, some men have been drinking heavily, according to a psychologist and some of the miners. And several have shown signs of emotional distress.

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